Some of the rhinos in Anarch Apokrifs had been given a territory marker about 40 metres underground. I found it while trying to bring the game back after a PC crash. By that point, getting a rhino to walk across the map felt like a milestone.

Anarch Apokrifs is a single-player RPG set in the post-apocalyptic world of Paradigm Worlds. You lead a hero and a party of creatures through real-time exploration, quests and encounters. When a fight starts, the game switches to a turn-based grid, where you deploy your party and use hero spells and each unit’s abilities.

Getting the game to run again

After months of development, a sudden PC crash left the project unable to compile during the move from Unreal Engine 4.27 to 5.8. I’m self-taught, and with errors I’d never seen before across a project this size, I thought the repair might take months.

I’ve been working with Codex to recover the game from backups, repair Blueprints and build C++ diagnostic tools. Then I test the changes in-game. I’ve now run a Windows build and confirmed that the core battle gameplay works. Some interface values still need fixing, and the next milestone is a fresh Windows package with the latest repairs, followed by another gameplay pass.

Both campaigns have their openings back

The Australian campaign and the snow mission both open with a conversation. Their opening maps now start the dialogue menus automatically, even before an exploration hero is present. I’ve tested both transitions. The dialogue widgets now live in the project, so I can edit them directly without changing the engine plugin. Full checks of party selection and progression through both campaigns are still ahead.

The rhinos and vampires started moving

The buried territory marker explained why some rhinos couldn’t reach their patrol area. There was another problem too. The navigation system was calculating routes for creatures much smaller than the ones actually trying to use them. A path could look valid to the engine and still be physically impossible for an NPC to follow.

After the repairs, a five-minute automated test recorded movement in all eight rhino groups and six vampire groups under investigation. Twelve groups assigned to territories reached their areas during that window. I still need to check more NPC types, longer journeys and performance.

If you want a look at the factions and creatures I was building before the crash, here’s the original Anarch Apokrifs post from 2024.